The Week Ahead: June 21 to 27

How you planked, lotused, or downward-dogged lately? There’s no better day to break out your yoga pants (assuming you don’t already wear them to Publix like everybody else) than June 21, labeled International Yoga Day by the august body of the United Nations General Assembly. The date was selected because it kicks off the Summer Solstice and is the longest day of the year—and regular yoga engagers know a thing or two about stretching things out. This second-annual fundraiser for the Nama Stacy Yoga Corporation’s national nonprofit will feature yoga variations for all speeds, ages and body types, including kids’ yoga and acro yoga, along with a drum circle, DJ and no less than 108 sun salutations planned. Health-conscious vendors will offer wellness and nutrition goods to complement your yoga meditations.

South Florida in 2016 is a long way from Detroit in 1960, but the Stage Door Theatre aims to transport its audiences to the birth of Motown thanks to this nostalgic jukebox musical by Kevin Black. There is little to no story connecting the songs, but Black has organized them into thematic groups spanning two decades and roughly 40 compositions from a who’s-who of Detroit soul: Aretha Franklin, Jackson 5, the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, the Temptations, and the list goes on. A talented sextet of performers brings fresh, young perspectives on the timeless tunes, with new arrangements or modified tempos re-invigorating the timeless standards. The show runs through July 17.

Although he performed his first standup material at age 19, comedy wasn’t always paying the bills for Lachlan Patterson. His cycle of short-lived professions has included bartending, waiting tables, construction work, landscaping, valet parking and flower delivery. When he auditioned the second time for “Last Comic Standing,” in 2014, he was walking dogs for a living. The NBC series would open new doors for the Canadian funnyman, taking him all the way to the finals, a “Last Comic Standing” national tour and headlining shows like this one. But if comedy hadn’t worked out, he could always have been a model: Even before his success on the show, he earned a reputation as comedy’s living Ken doll, and judge Keenan Ivory Wayans referred to him on TV as a “mannequin.” He plays up his matinee-idol looks in his routines about everyday life, sexuality and gender differences, approaching familiar subjects with new and inspired insights, arrestingly cutting observations and a gift for pantomime.

Boca Raton native son Chris Carrabba, the emotionally naked, tear-stained voice of Dashboard Confessional, recently told an interviewer that of all his music, it’s the songs “that happened in a vacuum” that have enjoyed the most longevity—the music he made early in his burgeoning career, before anybody outside of now-defunct South Florida punk clubs knew who he was. It’s been 10-plus years since Carrabba has enjoyed that kind of anonymity, but the emo-rock icon says he’s been liberated by the band’s seven-year hiatus from releasing albums, with his latest output harkening back to the halcyon days of Dashboard’s “Swiss Army Romance” and “The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most.” Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that songs from those albums dominate the group’s comeback tour, which is split between full-band and acoustic performances. Expect eardrum-bursting adulation from the audience at this hometown show, part of this year’s “Taste of Chaos” bill that also includes Taking Back Sunday, Saosin and the Early November.

Dismissed by many as a Hitchcock imitator and/or a perverse misogynist, Brian de Palma has survived five decades of making uncompromising, luridly violent features that, his champions argue, find poetry amid the carnage. Perhaps because of his polarizing reputation, he has neither the name recognition nor the Oscar statuettes accrued by the fellow “movie brats” with whom he emerged in the ‘70s, like Coppola, Scorsese and Spielberg. This documentary, by fellow filmmakers Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow, corrects the record by allowing its subject to speak at great length about every entry in his impressive canon, from landmarks like “Carrie,” “Scarface” and “Blow Out” through misfires like “Bonfire of the Vanities” and even his music videos. De Palma, who informs the camera that he “grew up in an operating room” where he “saw a lot of blood,” comes off as genial and candid, accepting praise for his films where it’s due and, more bravely, admitting to his mistakes.

Arguably Rodgers and Hammerstein’s finest musical, “South Pacific” received an elegant production earlier this year at the Wick. But you’ve probably never seen a live version like this. The Klezmer Company Orchestra will tackle this herculean show for the first time ever as its annual Spirit of America performance at FAU. KCO maestro Aaron Kula will conduct his 40-member orchestra through the original orchestration used on Broadway, while 10 actor-singers will present a semi-staged concert version of the show—among them Graham Fandrei, Rebekah Diaz-Fandrei and the award-winning Avery Sommers. The Gay Men’s Chorus of South Florida will supplement the action with lush vocal harmonies, promising a fresh—and decidedly local—new take on R&S’s tale of romance and prejudice during World War II.

The Cure hasn’t enjoyed a major worldwide hit in nearly 25 years, but that’s fine with us, thank you very much. From 1979 to 1992, core vocalist Robert Smith and his revolving door of musicians released a nine-album run of unalloyed classics that collectively brought goth-rock into the mainstream and vice versa. Early, spiky albums like “Thirteen Imaginary Boys” and “Boys Don’t Cry” placed these London upstarts at the vanguard of the burgeoning post-punk renaissance; the brooding “Faith” and “Pornography” wallowed masterfully in a mascara-stained forest of shadowy malaise; and mid-career touchstones like “Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me” and “Wish” found that the Cure had enough pop sunshine to flood even the darkest corners of their earlier work. Smith’s onstage persona, complete with bold lipstick, “Edward Scissorhands” makeup and raven’s-nest hair, has unified all versions of the Cure, whose 2016 tour marks its first South Florida appearance in nine years. In the press release, the band promises “37 years of Cure songs, mixing hits, rarities, favorites, and as-yet-unreleased tracks in a brand-new stage production.”

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